Harvesting Your Tomatoes

Enjoy Manitoba's Favourite Fruit!

From Your Friends At Schriemer's

With summer coming to a close, gardeners are harvesting their tomatoes and enjoying the bountiful rewards of their gardening efforts. Here are a few tips for picking and storing your tomatoes.

The best tomatoes for fresh eating go straight from the vine to your dinner table. Pick them when they are fully coloured; the fruit with the deepest colours will be the sweetest. They should be firm to the touch and not mushy. Tomatoes are generally sweetest when picked in the morning as opposed to in the heat of the day.

Pick your tomatoes with the stems on. Gently twist the tomato to break the stem without bruising the fruit, or use a knife or scissors to cut the stem just above the fruit. Don't remove the stems until you are ready to serve them.

Freshly picked vine-ripened tomatoes taste the best, but you can store tomatoes for a few days indoors at room temperature in a location away from direct sunlight. Tomatoes should never be refrigerated unless absolutely necessary.

You have a little more leeway if you're picking your tomatoes for canning or processing. In fact, tomatoes are often picked a little under-ripe and firmer for preserving to keep the acid content higher.

There are two types of tomatoes. Determinate varieties ripen all at once, so these are best for canning. Indeterminate tomatoes ripen over a prolonged period, so they are ideal for fresh eating throughout the summer and into early fall.

All tomatoes must be picked before the first frost; if left to freeze, the fruit will be ruined. You can ripen light green or pink tomatoes indoors by placing them in a cardboard box or in brown paper bags and storing them in a cool dark location such as in a basement or under a bed. Don't stack tomatoes on top of each other. Check frequently and be sure to remove any fruits that are beginning to spoil. Note that very dark green tomatoes will likely not fully ripen indoors, so leave them on the vine and hope for the best.

If fall frosts come early and there are still many tomatoes on the vine, you can salvage the remaining harvest. Just before the frost hits, pull the entire plant from the ground with all semi-ripe tomatoes still on it (pick off the dark green ones), hang it upside down in the basement or another cool location and let them ripen on the vine.

If all else fails and you're left with a bunch of green tomatoes, you can always cook up some delicious fried green tomatoes! Here's a couple of recipes from our Sherry that she swears by;

Sherry's Fried Green Tomatoes

garlic
2 cups fresh mushrooms
1 large cooking onion
olive oil
artichoke hearts - 2 or 3
3 or 4 green tomatoes
salt, pepper to taste
French bread
butter

Rub skillet with garlic. Fry mushrooms and onions together in oil over medium-hot heat until starting to brown. Slice artichoke hearts thinly and stir gently into mushrooms and onions. Turn heat down to medium. Cook until artichokes are almost tender. Add salt and pepper to taste. Slice tomatoes 1/4 to 1/2 inch thick. Place tomato slices on top of mushroom mixture. Turn skillet heat to medium-low and cook until tomatoes are tender. Stir gently together. Serve on slices of hot toasted and buttered French bread - YUMMY!

Mom's Idiot-Proof Recipe

Slice green tomatoes 1/4 to 1/2 " thick. Dip slices in corn meal. Fry in oil until brown, turning once (2 or 3 minutes each side). Top with parmesan cheese and serve.